The objective of providing the additional US and ISAF partner forces is of course to reverse the momentum of the Taliban given the security situation of the past few years has deteriorated...we’re doing hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure development. It’s the largest building boom in Afghanistan since Alexander (the Great) built Kandahar City. This has to be a comprehensive effort.

9:33- The fact is that 10 months ago or so now there was a recognition of by all the Pakistani leaders that the most pressing state to the very writ of Pakistani government was the external extremist threat. They’ve been conducting some quite impressive operation on the Pakistani Taliban, and against extremist syndicate elements. 11:09 They have conducted these operations with an impressive degree of skill. They have not cleared and left, they have cleared and are holding, and they’re endeavouring to build...and they even have an eye toward the ultimate transition. They’ve taken some significant losses from their leadership. Their leaders have very much led from the front. And extremists have fought back

The determination and the will remains quite impressive. Now, in the conduct of these operations they have also bumped into and confronted elements who have undermined the fight in Eastern Afghanistan in particular. Clearly over time it would be helpful if additional pressure could be put on the leaders of those elements. Pakistan has conducted operations over the years against these elements. It’s important to know what they have done over the past ten months, it is unique since 9/11 and I think we should recognizes their efforts.

‘AWAKENING’-TYPE APPROACH IN AFGHANISTAN?

14:46 There are actually some initiatives that have been launched in that regard. They’re under the acronym CDI...the community defense initiative. It essentially involves small special forces teams that have members who know the language, culture, and area, and basically live in the village with the people and seek to empower them to involve them and empower them in the maintenance of their own security. This is not quite the same as the Sons of Iraq, this is more of a village by village and valley by valley, because of the nature of the situation in Afghanistan.

16:16 [The Awakening strategy in Iraq] very slowly gathered momentum. By the time the surge was launched you had a handful of tribes come together, but there weren’t even the major guys. The major Sheikhs were sitting in Amman, telling every visiting American delegation they could solve the problem, which of course sitting there and doing it from Amman, not sitting in Anbar.

As the surge took place all of a sudden it took off. The conditions were right for it at the time. There was enormous frustration with Al Qaeda – the indiscriminate violence, the extremist ideology, and the repressive practices. 

Afghanistan is different, it’s a valley by valley and village by village social structure. 19:50 It truly is a case of all counterinsurgency being local.

19:57 Is there potential for this? We think so. We have launched initiatives to test that proposition, just as there is exploration of these reintegration initiatives together with the Afghan government.

LS - 23:35 From what you understand, what has the campaign in Waziristan accomplished? Do you think the Taliban can be reduced to zero, or are they something we and Afghans will always have to live with?

22:45 In the campaign in eastern south Waziristan there clearly has been the killing capturing, and displacement of the extremist leaders and elements in that area. There are relationships among all these different groups. There is a nexus, as Secretary Gates has said.

23:50 Sometimes some are up, sometimes others. There is still some degree of a symbiotic relationship between the groups. The Taliban in both countries does represent...in certain cases, it plays on degrees of dissatisfaction in one way or another. It obviously plays on the...attraction to extremism by certain elements. There are always these kind of tendencies in any population. 25:20 You’re just trying to keep it to an absolute minimum. Some of it is in response that the government has not gained full legitimacy in the eyes of the people. They seem to be predatory rather than serving the people. That’s why you have to take a comprehensive approach.

You can’t kill and capture your way out of an insurgency. You do have to kill and capture some in an insurgency.

You have to get at the conditions for why you have fertile ground for extremism in the first place. A reason why there is so much aid going to Pakistan. The Kerry-Lugar bill is 1.5 billion per year for each of the next 5 years in various forms of economic assistance.

28:00 You have to identify who the irreconcilables are, remove them from the population, and try to maintain security in those areas once they’ve been cleared. That is essentially the concept. This is what we did in the urban areas of Iraq as well. Obviously, Afghanistan is not Iraq, there are enormous differences, but there are also similarities in how you go about security urban areas. You have to have a really detailed, nuanced, granular sense of a situation so you can recognize who the enemies are.

Q: In terms of delays of the election, how much of a complication is this for the withdrawal?

31:48 The only changes that will result from the shift of the election day are quite small and they will actually result in the departure a bit earlier. We may transition them earlier now so that the command and control structure is completely set a few months prior to the onset of the election so that in the last few months in support of the Iraqi security effort there won’t be major changes.

32:40 Other than that we don’t see any need for big adjustments. The plan we had is appropriate for the date on which the elections will be held. We’ll be able to stay on the glideslope as planned for the reduction from the current about 115,000 US soldiers on the ground to under 50,000 by the end of August next year. That also brings about a shift in our mission focus to which we will all be in the advise and assist mode. We think that’s doable as well.

The fact is that we have seen an over 90% reduction in levels of attacks, violent civilian deaths, and even high-profile attacks from the height of all those categories in 2007.

It was well over 200 attacks in 2007, over the past month it’s been less than 15 on average per day.

34:44 What Al Qaeda has done we think in Iraq – and there’s no question Al Qaeda in Iraq has been significantly reduced in its capability and capacity. The flow of foreign fighters from Syria has been reduced dramatically from say 110 per month at the height to less than 10 per month, mostly because of what’s happened to Al Qaeda in Iraq and because of what source countries to make it harder to fly on a one way ticket as a military age male to Damascus.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been reduced significantly and they know that. We’ve gone after their...media cells, their financing cells, their leadership cells, needless to say.

35:52 What they have decided to do we believe is literally just conduct a lower level of attacks day to day and periodically coordinate high profile attacks so that they get the press bounce out of that. We saw that on the 19^th of August, the 25^th of October, and again on the 8^th December.  It’s been every month and a half or so. And then you have the month of November, which had the lowest level on record of civilian deaths and security incidents, and high-profile attacks.

There has to be continue pressure on Al Qaeda and Sunni extremist elements, who are still present. We are working to support [Iraqi government,] but it is their forces that are conducting the operations. The same against the Shiite extremists... we still have residual elements present, who still receive arming, training, and in some cases direction from Iran.

38:07 It is fair for Iraqi officials to express concern for the presence of Saddamist groups who operate quite openly in Syria and make some pretty outrageous statements, calling for the overthrow of elected Iraqi government. That is a concern. And there is some degree of financing that makes its way from those elements to some of the Sunni extremist elements operating in Iraq.

[Different Sunni extremists groups are] sometimes in league and sometimes in competition.

ON MONEY/COSTS OF DEVELOPMENT IN AFGHANISTAN:

40:00 There is no question that Afghanistan is going to require international assistance in a host of different ways for quite some time. The level of assistance and what’s require will depend on how well Afghanistan is able to increase its revenue generation. Afghanistan does have extraordinary mineral wealth. It has some of the world’s remaining unexploited world class deposits of copper, iron ore, and some other fairly exotic minerals. And it has some limited natural gas.

The estimates of the worth of these deposits are quite substantial, but they need to develop an entire industry to extract it and build the infrastructure to get it to market, and security. China has already invested in one copper mine.

You can’t kill or capture your way out of an insurgency... civilian component is expanding substantially.

Yet another difference from Iraq, Afghanistan does not have excess infrastructure anywhere. Iraq to begin with had an extraordinary military infrastructure that Saddam built. Including palaces with fantastic force protection we could occupy, in part because they sat empty, they could go use]. When we did the surge in Iraq we were able to put 6,000 troops into Iraq every month. You can’t do that in Afghanistan. There’s not a Kuwait, no port. The airstrips you have are some of the busiest in the world.

59:17 It was his way of conveying two messages, one of resolve and also of urgency. 1:00:38 We need to get on with this. It’s a war we’ve been at for 8 years already, and we need to make the kind of progress that can enable the gradual transition of tasks to Afghan forces.

LS: What is success for you in Afghanistan, and can the mission be considered a success if you don’t capture or kill Osama Bin Laden?

1:01:03 Obviously he has a lot of iconic value, but the fact is he does not have a lot of day to day or even month to month activity. He’s not giving the directions, we’re not even sure he’s even giving the strategic guidance, that tends to come from his number 2. But he does indeed represent something very significant to the extremists movements throughout the world, and it would be something major if he were killed or captured, but there hasn’t been hard intelligence on him in years.

LS: Based on the evidence you have, what specifically is Iran doing today that is detrimental to the US mission in Iraq and Afghanistan?

1:02:05 Iran continues to fund, train, equip, and give some direction to the residual Shiite militias and extremists elements in Iraq. There have been daily attacks with the so-called signature weapons only made by Iran, the explosively formed projectile, forms of improvised explosive devices, certain rockets etc. All that in frankly a reduced number, because of course the level of violence has gone down by over 90% since the Spring of 2007.

1:03:29  Yes there have been horrific attacks, as we saw in Baghdad recently, carried out by Al Qaeda and Sunni extremists groups. But again the overall violence reduced and the capacity of Al Qaeda significantly reduced as well.  

1:03:20 In Afghanistan Iran provides modest levels of equipment of explosives, perhaps funding to the Taliban and Western Afghanistan. It also uses so-called soft power to try to expand its influence as well. They don’t want the Taliban to necessarily succeed, they don’t want a Sunni extremist power controlling a country to the East, but they also don’t want us to succeed too easily either

1:04:00 There were various elements of cooperation that took place in the wake of the liberation of Afghanistan. It is conceivable that they want the same outcomes we want – an Afghanistan that is whole, that is not run by the Taliban again, and that is not run by other predominantly Sunni elements. 

1:05:02 The consequences of a possible strike on Iran in some respects are incalculable. No one really knows what the outcome would be, no one knows how much damage could be done to Iran, how much that could set back the nuclear program. We don’t think that Iran wants to get into a fight with the United States. They know that their conventional capability is far lower than ours.

What they tend to do is carry out indirect forms of activity, to use proxy elements, and that kind of capability that they have developed over the years.

LS: Beyond Afghanistan, especially as some terrorist leaders are pushed out, what are the other countries you worry about as potential havens or operating bases for Al Qaeda? Might you have to pursue operations there?

1:10:00 We do have concern as to all of the countries throughout the region. The establishment in Yemen of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a concern. There are tribal elements, discontent in some areas, a lack of basic services, and a very rugged terrain that Al Qaeda has found conducive to its activity in the border areas of Pakistan. That is of concern.

LS: An element of your strategy involves trying to bring over those who can be convinced to switch sides. How do you turn a Talibani? What keep them from switching back after we leave?

1:10:33 The lower to middle level Taliban members typically as part of that organization for a number of different reasons. They may have been intimidated by Taliban members encroaching into the area, their families might be threatened, they might be paid for what they’re doing, they might have little literally no other options of making money. So it’s a matter of addressing those reasons to get at the heart of why they’re in the Taliban. It might just be because they think the Taliban is winning, in some of these communities some of these members have survived for decades by being chameleons. 1:12:50 This is why there needs to be a reversal of the momentum of the Taliban, so that people have a sense that the Taliban does not have the initiative, but that the initiative is with the ISAF]

People have to realize there is a bigger incentive for being part of the solution rather than there is for remaining part of the problem.

If there’s a sense again that as we leave the Afghan security forces won’t be able sustain the security gains that have achieved, that Afghan government won’t be able to fulfil its obligations to the people, if  they fear there won’t be impartial justice, then it may lead people to hedge their bets or to stay with the Taliban.

A Response Press Statement

16-09-2009

We were profoundly saddened to hear the news of the death of the young Yemeni girl, Fawzeya Abdullah Yousef (age 12).  Our prayers and thoughts are with the family of the deceased. Over the years, the government of Yemen has embarked on an awareness campaign to end the practice of young marriages, which has been deeply rooted in the rural cultures of Yemen. Furthermore, the government of Yemen introduced to Parliament a proposed amendment to the Marriage Law, in order to raise the minimum marriage age to 17. Unfortunately, prior to the ratification of the amendments by the Honorable President Ali Abdullah Saleh, members of the conservative block in the Parliament have rescinded the proposed amendments to allow for further deliberations. It is anticipated that the matter will be finalized in the near future, and it is deemed an important priority of the government. It is worth noting too, that there have been recent efforts from the Ministry of Health in cooperation with World Bank to also establish emergency labor clinics in rural villages with the aim of reducing infant and maternity mortality.

Mohammed Albasha

Spokesman

Embassy of the Republic of Yemen

Washington, D.C.

"I was standing in the square (baharestan) I was watching the crowd. All of a sudden a filthy bearded guy appeared in front of me and said, "what the hell are you doing here?"

I said, "Nothing."

He said, "Let me see your purse."

Inside my purse he found my camera.

He took me and forced me into a minibus.

They immediately tied something around my eyes and started hitting me with all their might. When the minibus started moving they took out their electric baton and would keep it on my body for 4-5 seconds till it made me have epileptic-like fits.

Then they took me to a villa. The tied our hands in the back and told us to kneel on the ground like in prayer (for 12 hours they kept us like that!)

The interrogator entered the room and said, "You take Mousavi’s side??? He, whose wife was a whore before the revolution, Yes?? Now I will show you.

During the interrogation (lets not get into how much they molested us) I was one of the lucky ones, when they interrogated the girl next to me the guy had his hand up her underwear.

A pretty girl who was there was taken to another room the minute they saw her!

They also tortured us mentally. They had put a chair there and had connected it to electricity. They asked, "Who paid you to come out and demonstrate?" There was a noise from the electrically charged chair, "tell me who your bosses are or I will have you for the night. In the end they made us sign a paper blind folded. It was 4:30 a.m. when they took, us to a square in the south of Tehran and let us go and asked us to open our blind folds in five minutes.

Iran: Free Disabled Reformist

Condition of Saeed Hajjarian, Who Exposed Intelligence Ministry Killings in 1990s, Has Deteriorated

Hajjarian, 55, was detained without charge on June 15, 2009, and has neither seen a lawyer nor received adequate medical care. He was one of scores of prominent reformist politicians, intellectuals, journalists, clerics, student leaders, and others whom the authorities arrested in an effort to stamp out nationwide protests against the disputed results of Iran's June 12 elections.

A senior intelligence official in the 1980s, Hajjarian became a leading strategist in the reformist movement in the 1990s and a political adviser to then-President Mohammed Khatami in 1997. His newspaper, Sobh-e Emrooz (Today's Morning), played a major role in exposing the involvement of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence in a series of killings and disappearances of leading intellectuals in the late 1990s.

On March 12, 2000, when Hajjarian was a member of the Tehran city council, a gunman on a motorcycle shot him in the face in front of the city council building. Hajjarian survived, despite lapsing into a coma for more than a week, but is permanently disabled, largely wheelchair-bound, and requires ongoing medical assistance and monitoring.Zeinab Hajjarian, Saeed Hajjarian's daughter who lives in the United States, told Human Rights Watch that her father has been subjected to increasing physical and psychological pressure in detention.

Her information is based on an account by her mother, Vajihe Marsoosi, who is a medical doctor and who visited her husband in Evin prison on July 24. Hajjarian told his wife that interrogators regularly questioned him outdoors under the sun in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Based upon her visit and evaluation of her husband's health, Marsoosi suspected he was at risk of serious cardiac and hepatic complications.

Marsoosi told her daughter: "His color seemed yellow and not normal. He was completely weak and was unable to speak easily. He seemed under a lot of psychological pressure." Marsoosi said she took Hajjarian's pulse and noticed irregularities, raising concern about a serious heart problem.

"His conditions clearly showed that he was not being taken care of," her daughter quoted her as saying. "It seemed like they were trying to have him killed."

Zeinab Hajjarian said that when Marsoosi asked the interrogators when they would release her husband, they replied, "When their project is done." They did not specify what the "project" was. Many detainees have come under intense pressure to sign false confessions supporting the authorities' assertion that Iran's post-election protests are instigated and backed by foreign powers and designed to topple the government.

Zeinab Hajjarian told Human Rights Watch that her mother said that prison authorities were not allowing his family to provide Hajjarian with the medications necessary to treat his condition. His condition requires careful administration of a range of prescribed medicines; incorrect administration can result in serious harm.

Besides putting pressure on Hajjarian himself, the authorities have also interrogated and harassed his son Mohsen, and his wife, who both live in Iran. A security officer reportedly warned them that Hajjarian would come under more pressure if they reported the conditions of his detention to the media.

Zainab Hajjarian told Human Rights Watch that anonymous persons, who she thinks were Iranian security agents, have contacted her by email in the United States and warned her against reporting anything regarding her father's condition.The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners require that:

"Sick prisoners who require specialist treatment shall be transferred to specialized institutions or to civil hospitals." Failing to provide adequate medical care for a seriously ill detainee has been considered inhuman or degrading treatment by international courts, a very serious human rights violation.

"The Iranian government is exploiting Hajjarian's poor health and disability, apparently in order to force him to make a false confession, in line with the abusive interrogation pattern we've been seeing," said Stork. "The Iranian authorities are completely responsible for his well-being. They should release him to his family and medical caregivers immediately."

For more Human Rights Watch reporting on Iran, please visit:

If you talk to my grandma who doesn’t go out much and doesn’t hear much about the unrest (it’s never on the news or anything), then she’ll tell you everything’s like how it always has been… no change. But if you talk to the younger people or just people who follow politics and what’s going on more, then they will say there is definitely an atmosphere of both fear and resistance in all the major cities of Iran, not just Tehran, and that even if nothing comes of everything that’s happening, at least the world will know that Iranians are unhappy with their government and that the Iranian government is not representative of the Iranian people.

One of my cousins is married to a Bazari and he said him and all his Bazari friends are pro change/pro Mousavi. But they aren’t as vocal about this as they might want to be because they are scared of the government coming and closing down their business. To them, providing for their families is more important than fighting for something that’s so unsure.

I just got back from a village trip. I asked around about what people thought about Iran’s political situation and most people were pro Ahmadinejad. Also, most of them didn’t know about the protests and stuff going on.

There are still shouts of Allah-o-Akbar at 10:15 every night, which last until 10:30, but they have significantly decreased. I do it with my cousins every now and then. This is how it goes: we go to the roof once we hear one or two yells at around 10:15. Then we sit by a wall so that no one can see us and we yell. Allah-o-Akbar starts off the yelling. And it’s cool because you can hear it from all around, but you can’t see anyone since there is a rumor that snipers go on top of rooftops to shoot anyone they see doing it. Then someone starts it off and the yelling switches to “Marg bar dictator” (Death to the dictator). Then again someone else changes it to “Ya Hossein,” with another person responding “Mirhossein” (This is obviously the name of Mousavi).

One person had his arm shattered in different places, another had a broken skulls. As soon as we came out of the houses they continued to use the tear gas and batons. We ran, but it was no use. A young girl and young man were killed in front of us. Know that it was the disciplinary forces that fired the bullets and were attacking people with the batons and tear gas. The plainclothes officers did not have batons, they had planks of wood to beat us to death. The Ansar (special forces) were also there, they took a young guy right in front of us. The police were attacking people; once they targeted someone they would catch them and hit them to death. There were a lot of people lost/disappeared.

The mobile phones were cut off in many areas. Our only hope was people's houses who had opened their doors to us. They had water and fire to counteract the tear gas and they all had first aid kits. After a lot of running away and chasing, we tried to get out of being encircled by police. The only option seemed like suicide -- we had to cross them, passing through hundreds of officers. They did not think that any protesters would come toward them, so they didn't think we were part of the demonstration. There was a lot going on during the rest of our journey, but all the roads heading toward Vali Asr were filled with cars honking their horns in protest. The police hitting the cars as well, using batons on

We were in the red zone and it was nothing less than war. Pray for us."

"Two weeks ago that they raided our house. They threatened to break the door down, so my sister let them in. They went through my dad’s personal belongings, took [Karroubi] campaign material and his computer from the campaign. Since then he’s been in hiding. They tracked him down yesterday. One of his friends gave a call to let us know he had been arrested.

I expect he’ll be in solitary confinement and pressed to do confessions. Anything that comes out of him as a confession is under torture or pressure. Anything he confesses to is illegitimate. He has done nothing wrong. All he’s been doing is reporting what is going on. He was freely expressing his opinion, it’s his constitutional right.

My dad is just one of so many who’ve been arrested during the past few weeks. He lost his brother in the Iran-Iraq war. He is part of this country and the country means a lot for him."

A group called the “Mourning Mother of Iran” holds a vigil in Laleh Park that is broken up by police. They sent us this statement:

We continue to mourn…

The silent mourning of mothers on Saturday June 27^th 2009 in Laleh Park in Tehran was violently suppressed by security forces. A number of mothers and young women attending this peaceful gathering/sit-in were detained by the security forces. Despite the violent crackdown by the security forces and their attempt to disperses the attendees, more than 500 women and mothers were able to continue with the sit-in and gatherings in the central spot of the park. These mothers were peacefully gathering to commemorate the young men and women who had participated in the non-violent post-election demonstrations and had been martyred.

Following our first announcement, we- the mourning mothers of the martyrs- will continue with our peaceful sit-in in Laleh Park and other parks in Tehran. We will do so till we see the end of violence on the streets, freeing of all those arrested for participating in the peaceful protests after the June 12^th election specially our fellow mothers who had been arrested last Saturday and the prosecution of those responsible for our children’s death. Our sit-ins will be in Laleh park and the following parks every Saturday from 7-8 p.m.

Laleh Park

Andishe Park

Mellat Park

Gofegoo Park

Dear Mothers! Our mother instinct has forced us to demand justice for our children and freeing those who are unlawfully detained in prisons. We invite you to join our grassroots peaceful gatherings in the above-mentioned parks on Saturdays of each week.

To our boys and brothers in the security forces! We are your mothers. We treat you with respect as mothers. Respect us and our wishes and refrain from inflicting harm onto your mothers. Our sighs will follow you if you treat us with violence.

The Mourning Mothers of Iran